Between strategy and integrity: political consultants and the ethics of data-driven campaigning in Central Europe

This article examines how political consultants operating in Central Europe interpret and navigate the ethical challenges of data-driven campaigning. Rather than offering a systematic country-by-country comparison, it develops a regionally grounded qualitative account of professional ethical reasoning in campaign environments marked by polarization, populist communication, uneven democratic resilience, and weak or politicized enforcement. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with sixteen political consultants active in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, the article uses Lees-Marshment and Raynauld’s normative framework as an analytical lens while also identifying inductive patterns in practitioners’ accounts. The findings show that consultants often understand ethically ambiguous practices through three recurring modes of reasoning: compliance-based pragmatism, contextual relativization, and democratic responsibility. While many acknowledge the democratic risks of microtargeting, opaque messaging, and strategic segmentation, they frequently normalize such practices as necessary features of competitive campaigning. The article’s main contribution lies in developing the notion of perceived regulatory ‘lawlessness’: a condition in which formal rules exist but are perceived as weakly, unevenly, or politically enforced. It thus contributes to debates on political communication ethics by showing how democratic ideals are adapted and constrained in everyday campaign practice.